Chapter 7 - The Longclasp

Smoke, heat, and the burnt smile of firelight swelled up from the old riverbed dividing the town of Aster-Szem. The smoke poured up into the sky to blacken the stars. The smiling light crept onto the banks. The heat parched the soil and roadstones on either side, soil and stone already dry from the long rainless sunshine of prior days. Beneath it all sounded the predator-growl of fire consuming textiles, gnawing at timber, cracking bricks. Above it, on the Szem side of town only, came the voices and movement of the muira.

Two of the voices were men - brothers they seemed by look - grunting and cursing, a familial chair of ancient wood between them. Five more voices - strangers, men and women both - cheered at the brothers, sweating against the night-heat of the fire, as they walked the chair across the baking stones to the bank of the dry river. With three swings the brothers tossed the chair into the flame. Another voice was that of a weeping old woman, who brought a carton full of old leather armor. She seemed to hesitate before the lip of the river of fire. Another voice, a young man, consoled her. With a face of rage lit orange-and-yellow, and a strong curse in muiric, he took the crate from her arms and threw it for her into the flame.

All along the Szem side of the old riverbed, muira men and women; families, lonely elders, even children; working class and upper class alike; people by the dozens; all threw their belongings over the dry river’s bank. Into the fire. They threw their family arms and armor. Crossbows, spears, tunics of padded cloth and carapace-shell. They threw other things. Elk saddles, bits and bridles, pillows, workmans’ tools, portable looms, even raw good bundles of silk and silt grain and feathers. With each thrown possession the crowns of the flame rose. Some of the yellow tongues licked so high that they danced above the lip of the precipice. And with each new yellow tongue, a cry from the crowds burst forth:

“Burn what you cannot carry.”

“Let the Teironian’s make use of the ashes.”

“You. Stop.”

“Leave the stuff, fool. This isn’t a giveaway.”

“You’ll only burn yourself.”

These last remarks and like kind flew from the lips of the people who were sacrificing their goods into the fire. They flew to the ears of the few daring souls, human and muira, on both sides of the old riverbed, who were climbing down toward the fire. Scavengers. They weighed the heat against what they might gain, and found the latter worth the former.

“Help!” a voice cried from beyond the edge. “Help please!”

A light glowed toward the precipice from below. All at once one of the scavengers scrabbled at the broken, baking turf of the lip on the Aster side. He wore an oilcloak over his head and shoulders, fastened tight down his front. A mantle of flame had crawled across this cloak. The man burned. With one hand he tried to pull himself up onto the ledge. With the other he alternately batted at the fire engulfing his upper body and pulled at the drawstrings fasting his cloak. “Somebody!” he shouted again. Some of the muira standing on the Szem side stopped what they were doing to watch the man. One man shook his head, frowning behind his beard. The majority only stopped and stared.

“Ahhhhh!” The burning man had a long beard braided down to his chest, and the tip had caught fire under his cloak. He now grabbed at his chest with both hands, trying to press out the flame. He also tried to keep his elbow over the edge, but his arm was slipping, and the dry soil at the edge began to break and fall away.

“Sky’s spots, help that man!”

Three figures ran across the Aster road. Their features were black and indistinct under the smoke-dark night. Just as the man began to slide back from the precipice, down the bank, toward the flame, the men reached him. Two of them grabbed him by the elbows and dragged him roughly onto the road, while the third tore his own cloak off and threw it over the burning man.

By degrees the three men were able to smother the flames. The two who had hauled the scavenger onto the road pulled him to a stand. The third man had meanwhile retrieved a lantern and quickstriker from the ground. By its light the three took an account of the one they had pulled from the flame.

The oilcloak had burned away completely from the human man, along with most of his hair. What was left was a head and beard of singed, blacked patches. He looked perhaps forty, with sores covering his skin - some bright red from the fire, others from rough living or illness.

“Thanks to you folks,” said the man in a coarse-grain voice. He coughed. “Certain I was of dying.”

“What is your name, setter?” asked the one who had sacrificed his cloak. He had a clean, emotionless expression, with a square jaw, and dark, well-combed hair.

“Ekemmon of Aster,” said the man. He saw now that the other two were vigil soldiers. His relief lapsed somewhat, along with his initial garrulousness. He held out the slightly singed cloak to the one who had asked.

“No. Keep it,” the man replied. He smiled, but the expression was awkward and incomplete on his face. It hardly turned up one corner of his mouth and did not reach anywhere near to his eyes. It was as though someone had once instructed him on the muscles used in a smile, but he had never practiced their application before, and this was his first attempt.

“What shall we do with him, Setter Odden,” asked one of the vigil soldiers to the clean-shaven man. Odden of Barthos, Barthan Foreign Ambassador, whose cloak it was that the graced the burned man’s shoulders, dropped the vague smile. He shrugged. “I suppose you may take him to the Aster gaol for looting and riot.”

“Will you be alright without our company, setter?”

Odden waved a dismissing hand. The two guards led Ekemmon of Aster away, the latter still shaking and smoking.

Left alone, Odden’s shoulders sank ever so slightly, as if he had let down some load from his hands. He stepped closer to the precipice of the smoking riverbed, his lantern shining superfluously at his hip. Odden held an arm up against the blaze and the smoke and the light as he neared. He stared down into the inferno. He watched the fires lick over tables and benches and piles of clothing and old brooms. He watched, with the same distant searching look he had worn when looking from his window at the embassy, down upon the gravestones. As Odden of Barthos was not one of the flameseers gifted with the future sight offered by light and shade, he could read no more in the fires than he had in the headstones. Only the leaping, burning reflection in the blacks of his eyes was different.

“Odden? My dear fellow is that you?”

The use of his name attracted Odden’s attention over the roar of the fire and the shouting from the muira on the other side of the ditch. He looked across the smoking chasm. On the other side - the Szem side - of the riverbed, Odden could distinguish a short, swarthy muira man with thick sideburns and a bald head, waving a hand to attract his attention. He squinted. After a moment he returned the wave, keeping his other hand half-tucked into the front pocket of his tunic. “Setter Halas,” he said. “Evening to you. I would not have expected to find you here.”

“Nor I you,” replied Milar Halas, who was the Elder of the Szem Council, and the Elder of Halas hearth. “Come to watch the flames as well?”

“Haven’t the residents of Szem been warned that burning and rioting are illegal?”

“Neither the royal army nor the vigil can drag citizens to jail by the dozens, Odden.”

“No, of course not.” Odden rubbed the short, sandy stubble forming over his jawbone with his long fingers, staring down into the flames once more. Then he shook his head and looked back across to Milar. “Do you dine this evening?”

“Delighted to.”

“Where?”

“Shall we walk apace to The Longclasp?”

Odden giving his assent, the two diplomats walked separately up either side of the old riverbed. Only a short track of the river had been set aflame and fed on the belongings of the muira families from the Szem side. While they had conversed with each other over it, however, the enormous growl, and the stifling heat, and the smoke, had rendered shouting necessary by both men. As they proceeded north towards The Longclasp bridge where they might cross and meet, the two agreed by mutual silent understanding to withhold conversation until they passed beyond the burning and crackling stretch.

Each, for a time as they walked, held conference with his own thoughts. The short, swarthier muira councilor, with his ivory skin dulled to eggshell by time under the sun, and his golden veins glowing doubly gold in the heat of the fire, marching with sharp, resolute footsteps; contrasted with the tall human Barthan, gaunt almost to a paleness of skin exceeding that the of the muira, with his well-combed hair tucked behind his ears, and his slightly-stubbled cheek glowing in the light, and his own wraithlike glide up the road. And between the two; the curtain of orange and smoke.

After a few hundred arms the pair left the glowing the trench, and its stench of smoke and burning hair, and the clusters of muira citizens feeding it. The thunder of the bonfires faded. Odden held his lantern high overhead. But it proved unnecessary. Now that they were beyond the main plume of smoke, The Watchful Stars let down a silver luster by which the outline of the town appeared. Odden saw The Longclasp, stretched like a black rib-bone across the expanse of the chasm.

“Odden,” Milar Halas broke the silence with a call. Odden looked across and saw the muira councilor point a finger back in the direction they had come. “Do you think you’d ever find yourself there?”

“Scavenging in the fire?” Odden asked. Now that the pair were beyond the fire, and as the wind was low this summer night, the pair hardly had to raise their voices. Aster-Szem, beyond the inferno, slept silently that night, the 15th of Middle Summer.

“I meant throwing your chattels into the flame.”

Odden shook his face slowly, then realized Milar couldn’t see the motion in the dark at a distance. “Never.” he said.

“What about the maps and pacts and receipts in the Barthan Embassy? Would you burn those?”

“No.”

“No you wouldn’t burn them?”

“The embassy has no documents it would not put under the eyes of the public. Provided it were given sufficient reason.”

Odden heard the steps of the councilor across the way cease to echo, as the latter paused his step for a moment. Milar said, “I’ve offended you.”

Odden kept his stride toward the bridge. “I understood your meaning.”

“I only asked hypothetically, about the Embassy.” Milar’s footsteps resumed. “We both hope it won’t come to that. I mean having to leave our embassies. Having to burn what we leave behind so that the enemy won’t-”

“Unquestionably,” said Odden. “A resolution must still exist which will satisfy both the Teironian Tyrant and Ahn’s Royal Council.”

“It seems the folk of Szem would disagree.”

“What can be the purpose of setting tearoom stools and grain cabinets on fire?”

“So that no one else may use them when the muira leave.”

“That surely won’t come,” said Odden.

For a time, they walked without speech. Only at one point did the music of evening break this silence. A muira man came walking past Milar, leading his elk toward the conflagration laden with harness bags. The elk’s shod hooves tapped upon the smooth paving of the road, first growing louder in their approach, then fading off into the distance as the commoner walked past.

Milar couldn’t see it in the dark, but across the dry river Odden deliberately tried to loosen his shoulders. He let the lantern hang lower on his right side. He relaxed the hand tucked into his pocket.

“What would Barthos’s position be,” Milar went on gradually, “in theory, if the civilian muira of Aster-Szem were forced to leave?”

“That would depend on the cause of the exodus,” said Odden.

“Suppose that Teiron were to decline Ahn’s ultimatum.”

“What are the terms?”

“They would be several. The most pressing of which is that the royal army be given policing authority over Aster-Szem.”

The thumb of Odden’s half-tucked hand ran back and forth along the hem of his pocket. “The military rights of Teiron to police both halves of the town are mutually assured under the 3378 Treaty of Margrane.”

“Well?”

“Ratified by queen Anastasia’s own mother, as well as the Villgoranian Gorvoid, and the Tyrants of Thiges, Barthos, and Teiron. Were Teiron to respond negatively at such terms, even with the ultimate reaction, Barthos would of course be obligated to recognize their authority.”

“Could you state certainly,” Milar went on after a pause, “that Barthos - and by extension Thiges - would come in on the side of Teiron, if Villgorania came in on the side of Ahn? In the event of… ultimate reaction?”

“Barthos would react in accordance with her interests,” said Odden.

“Barthos would be instigating continental conflict for the sake of one half of one town!”

The muira councilor’s voice had risen back to a shout with this last remark, though the interference of the flames was far behind. Odden of Barthos looked across the way, but could discern no expression on his counterpart’s face in the dark. He kept his own voice empty of emotion as he replied, “Barthos recognizes the interests of Ahn - of the muira race - in Aster-Szem. Both generally and specific to this recent misfortune. The Barthan Tyrant and his archons will not, however, condone any violation of the Mantes Mountains neutral territory.”

“Well.” Councilor Milar Halas gave a small cough. “Let’s shelve the topic for now. Here is Longclasp at last.”

The two men reached The Longclasp at the same moment. They stepped out onto the great bridge. Milar ran his hand along the gritty surface of the waist-high parapet; Odden kept his own palm sheathed in his tunic pocket. When they met at the center, Odden set his lantern on the parapet. They shook hands. As if sharing the thought, they turned at the same instant toward the direction they had come. The fire still glowed visibly in the distance, the smoke blackening a portion of the stars.

“Where shall we go?” asked Milar.

Odden rubbed his chin. “Atriales’ Curls is still serving at this time of evening.”

“They’re decent.”

“What do you say to cabbage soup, some sea bulbs, and boiled goat with mustard? Some salad, fruit, mead and tea? Smokethistle to round it off?”

“Before we go-” Milar ground a heel on the paving stones of the bridge. “I’ve been directed by Villniver Varadi to pass you a document.”

Odden turned and accepted from Milar a piece of parchment. It was wrapped around the quarrel of an arbalest. “I understand,” he said gravely.

“It’s not mine, you know.” The half of Milar’s pale face which the lantern light shone upon flushed pink.

“I understand, friend.”

“The terms are to be read before the Teironian authority in the city.”

“The Tyrant himself will arrive tomorrow. I will be sure he receives it.”

“Shall we go?” asked Milar. He gestured toward to the Aster side of town, clearly anxious to move past the exchange.

“With delight,” answered Odden. He stowed the quarrel in an inner pocket, picked up the lantern, and matched step with Councilor Milar Halas toward their supper.